In this week’s episode, you'll get to listen to an exclusive interview between our Executive Director, Kat Armstrong, and Susan Riffe.
Susan grew up as a Kansas farm girl who spent summers traveling with her family throughout the Midwest harvesting wheat for other farmers by contract, which meant she spent long hours driving really big farm machinery and helping her mom fry 4 chickens at a time to feed their very hungry 12 person crew. She drove herself down I-35 to attend Baylor University where she met her wonderful husband, Lee, and was inspired to enter academia by some awesome professors. After getting her PhD from the University of Southern California, she started as an accounting professor at SMU in 1992 and is still very passionate about teaching graduate students how to read and understand financial statements. Susan and Lee have been married more than 30 years and are empty nesters now that their twins, Garrett and Allison, are in college at Baylor and Texas A&M, respectively. For 13 years, their family has gone on a mission trip to Guatemala that is sponsored by their beloved church home, Northwest Bible. Opportunities to travel internationally have been a highlight of the current season of life.